Barring a miracle, or infernal deal, Romano Prodi’s government will fall later today, when a vote of confidence in which one of his coalition allies, the UDEUR party, will vote against him.
It’s been on the cards since last week, when Justice minister (and leader of the UDEUR party) resigned his post following a blitz by investigating magistrates that saw 22 of his party (including himself and his wife) being put officially under investigation in a corruption probe.
It’s all a depressingly familiar scene – though with some variations. In 1992, at the outset of the Mani Pulite corruption scandal, prime minister Bettino Craxi reacting to the news that he was under investigation addressed parliament in a literally stunning speech in which he admitted that his (and all other) parties had recieved illegal donations. The reaction to his speech was silence.
Last week Mastella gave an emotional and lengthy speech (strange, given that it was supposedly impromptu) where he admitted nothing, and lashed out at magistrates. His speech recieved rousing applause from most sectors of the parliament, and afterwards speakers from all the major parties offered their solidarity to the minister under investigation.
His party the UDEUR has as its powerbase the region of Campania – a region where for fifteen years they have been unable to organise a system that allows for regular and uninterrputed rubish collection. A region where cancer rates have apparently doubled due to exposure to toxic waste. Mastella’s party is largely under investigation for a number of incidents where it’s alleged that party members influenced the appointment of various civil servants in return for votes. Mastella, with shades of Craxi (who, though he died in exile in Tunisia, has been steadily rehabilitated over the last 5 years), admitted his ethical vision last week in a press conference: “The request for a position? Politics is done like that. It may be deplorable but, excuse me, everyone does it like this”.
With his resignation Mastella declared that his party would still support Prodi’s sickly majority. Yesterday he withdrew that support. Only the hardest of hearts would cynically suggest that his support of the government was tied to some kind of intervention in the ongoing investigation. In fact the timing suits Mastella’s party perfectly. Should an election be called tomorrow it’s almost definite that the centre-right led by Berlusconi would win a comfortable majority -and one in which there’s probably a place for Mastella’s ‘centre’ party. Electoral reform has been in the air recently with the formation of the new centre-left PD party determined to squeeze small and demanding coalition partners out of the running.
In the aftermath of Mani Pulite various political parties exploded, but their politicians remained on the scene (Mastella, for example, at the time was a member of Andreotti’s christian democrat party – the DC) and simply went to find new homes straddling the left and right (Mastella has served both in Prodi and Berlusconi’s governments – despite their supposed ideological incompatibility). Some semblance of a shakeup was required back then. This time round no-one has any illusions. It’s business as usual.